Practice Makes Perfect: 7 Movie Scenes That Took A Grueling Number of Takes to Complete!

When you're throwing colossal amount of money at a film project, the end result better be as perfect as you can get.

That's why there is often phenomenal pressure on the film crew and actors to go above and beyond to complete a single scene, and make it the best it can ever be.

Below are seven movie scenes that took absolutely forever to film:

1. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Scene: Mike Teavee's father's line "Not 'till you're twelve, son!"

Apparently, the actor couldn't get the simple line quite right every time so it took 40 takes to perfect - and it's crazy because there were so many other actors in the scene who had to re-do it every single time, too!

2. The Shining

Scene: Halloran explains what the Shining actually is

It's reported that this particular scene took a colossal amount of time to film - 148 to be precise.

Director Stanley Kubrick was notorious for taking hundreds of repeated takes until he felt a scene was truly fit for the final cut. Apparently, in total he shot 1.3 million feet of film during the production of The Shining.

3. Some Like It Hot

Scene: Anytime Marilyn Monroe said her lines

During the filming of the movie, Marilyn kept getting her lines muddled, often messing up the order of the words. Apparently, the line "It's me, sugar!" took 47 takes to perfect and the "Where's the bourbon?" took 59 times.

It's reported that her forgetfulness meant that the director had to write her lines on a piece of paper and hold it up in front of her, but she still messed up!

4. Young Master

Scene: Fan fight scene

During the filming of one of Jackie Chan's first major roles, he was in a scene in which he was required to beat someone half to death with a fan. And unfortunately, he just couldn't get it right!

The end result took a whopping 329 takes to complete.

5. The Usual Suspects

Scene: The line-up scene

Perhaps one of the most iconic scenes from the movie, the moment was meant to a tense vibe to it. However, it took a really long time to film because none of the actors would take it seriously. Either one would fart loudly, or another would burst out laughing, meaning that eventually the director gave up and just left the silly version in the film.

6. City Lights

Another horror tale of a director demanding an actor to do a ridiculous amount of takes was when Charlie Chaplin demanded of Virginia Cherrill to say the same line ("Flower, sir?") over and over 340 times!

The mad thing about this is that City Lights was a silent movie.

7. Spider-Man

Scene: Cafeteria lunch tray

You'd think that the scene in which Tobey Maguire catches the falling lunch tray was done with CGI. It wasn't.

And that's why it took a phenomenal amount of takes to perfect because Spidey actually caught everything himself. Check it out for yourself: